Solar collectors for air heating have common elements including a frame with sides and ends, means to support an absorber plate, air channels, inlet and outlet connections, and glazing.
Currently, most collector frames and absorber plates are metallic low carbon steel or aluminum, glazing is single or double glass with sealants or gasketing, all relatively heavy, expensive, and requiring assembly of components not well adapted to high speed processing.
As a result, present solar collectors are costly and not competive with other types of energy.
An abundance of solar data defines solar insolation and absorption (efficiency) for many different collector designs, including variables such as different latitiudes, solar seasonal angles, angles of collector tilt, hours of sunshine, etc.
Given so many variables, there were few consumers who understood solar engineering, especially how to calculate collector system economics, and therein resides the economic failure of solar energy for home use. Solar energy is all about abundant energy, how to collect and utilize it, and how to make solar systems and therms of heat output competitive with other sources.
Solar collectors for residential heating are only part of the installed cost but presently represent a significant portion of the expense.
Current practice involves roof or wall mounting of collectors that are fixed and at proper sun angles for only a portion of the solar year.
Since roofs and wall exist, they were the preferred site for installation of panel collector arrays. Given that existing roof/wall areas were already available, other mounting options were not usually considered, nor were they practical due to the size and weight of current collectors.
Collector efficiency was and is considered to be critical to production of heat despite other major limitations imposed by fixed mounting angles etc. and collector designs included costly components for marginal efficiency increases.
With the inventive collectors using lighter materials and making them easy to connect as an array in a framework remote from a building collectors can now be arranged for optimum solar angles and maximum solar colletion per sq. ft to provide large ares for solar collection and despite the possibilty of lower efficiencies, this invention and solar concepts aim toward greater solar insolation and collection with some potential loss of efficiency.
Together with inexpensive materials produced at speeds over 300 fpm, converted into components and assembled at about 50 panels/min, the inventive panels provide inexpensive supplemental heat at a cost per therm competitive with conventional fuels.
The objective of the invention is to provide solar collectors from material abundantly produced, readily converted with known technology requiring less assembly time, for light weight installation in a framework pivotable along one margin to adust to changing solar seasonal angles.
With the above and other objectives in view, more information and understanding of the invention and its use for supplemental heat may be achieved by reference to the detailed description hereinafter